Is post-fact reasoning redeemable?

You know how I do. When people make strong claims, I want evidence and arguments. So this US presidential campaign was a lot of work. A lot! (E.g., I read over 1000 pages about Clinton-related investigations alone). The problem is that people made loads of unsupported claims during the election. So I asked for loads of evidence. Curiously, people didn’t take kindly to my requests for evidence. As a reasoning researcher, this was fascinating. But as an aspiring reasoning teacher, it was thoroughly demoralizing. In this post, I’ll discuss my experience, some research that bears on my experience, and what this tells us about the redeem-ability of post-fact reasoning.

1. Too Many Unsupported Claims

First of all, there were way too many unsupported claims in my midst. I just didn’t have the time to follow-up on all of them.

People who know me might be surprised by this. After all, I interact with very few people. I go to work. And I go back home. I rarely “hang out”, as they say. So it’s not like I was canvassing local neighborhoods or searching the internet looking for unsupported claims. I was just going about my day. But in talking to a few friends/family, checking my online social network, running into people around town, etc., I was inundated with more unsupported claims than I could address.

2. People’s Responses Were Disappointing

When I asked for evidence, I expected people to give some evidence — even if it wasn’t always good evidence. But I was wrong. Usually, people didn’t even try to give evidence. And when they did give evidence, it was bad evidence. Looking back, people responded in one of four ways.

2.1 Change the subject

One way people responded was by changing the subject. So, for instance, when I asked for evidence for a damning claim about Hillary Clinton, they’d start talking about something else:

“Look, Trump tells it like it is. So […]”.

2.2 Overwhelm the fact-checker

Another way people would respond is with further unsupported claims. For example, when I asked for evidence for the damning claim about Hillary Clinton, people would say, “She’s…

got blood on her hands!”

just not a good person!”

got character issues.”

These claims require even more evidence. So when people made the claims, fact-checking became even more difficult.

2.3 Cite poor evidence

Sometimes people did give evidence — albeit bad evidence. For instance, when I asked an old co-worker why they thought that Hillary Clinton had bad character, they replied,

I watched the Benghazi hearings. I could see it on her face.

That was it. That’s all they could muster. (Aside: think about the fact that this person can serve on a jury.)

2.4 Attack the person (not the claim)

A third response was some sort of attack.

You’re just a blind leftist.†

Let me guess, you also support baby killing.††

3. What Does This Mean?

Given my experience, I’m entirely unsurprised that some people call ours a “post-fact era” and some people call certain voters “irredeemable.” After all, the only kind of evidence that people seemed to appreciate was the evidence that confirmed the view they had before they started looking for evidence — #confirmationBias. And if people are only interested in confirming their own view of the world, then it would seem that they care more about feeling correct than they do about the facts or about “the common good” (Brennan 2012).

4. The Problem: It Was Never About Facts

Think about it. There are very careful, detailed, free, and easy-to-find reports produced by massive professional investigations and large-scale fact-checking operations out there.

Reports like this bear directly on many peoples’ unsupported claims — e.g., peoples’ unsupported claims Hillary Clinton’s email use. But — as far as I can tell — people who make such claims haven’t even read the report. Worse, when I point such people to such reports, they flat-out reject the reports! (And for fallacious reasons.).

For example, the Inspector General’s report on email security and management found that Republican Secretary Powell used a private line to send official emails from a personal email address. It also found that Republican Secretary Rice (like Powell and Clinton) failed to follow State Department separation procedures regarding email. Oh, and it found that 90 of Powell’s/Rice’s immediate staff used personal emails for official business. When I mention this report’s findings around some people, they respond like this:

Notice the mental shortcuts these people use to systematically dismiss certain evidence. They’re not dismissing evidence based on careful analysis. They’re dismissing it based solely on its association with a group that they don’t like. So their political claims aren’t even intended to be about facts; they’re about identity.

It’s like spectator sports: spectators boo when their favored team receives a foul — even if, empirically, the foul is indisputable.

And since President Johnson, trust in government is way down, in general (ibid.). More specifically, most Republicans report that they “never” trust the government (vs. a minority of Democrats that report the same thing) (Hetherington & Rudolf 2015, italics added).

So when the Inspector General’s report about email conflicts with Republicans’ claims about Hillary Clinton, then it might be normal for Republicans to flat-out reject the report — and not because they’re Republican, but because they’re human. (NB: normal ≠ good, acceptable, etc.).

6. What now?

Honestly, I’m not sure. And to be honest, dealing with peoples’ responses to my requests for evidence is exhausting.

Part of my exhaustion comes from having the wrong expectations. Looking back I (foolishly) expected people to care about evidence and to update their arguments and conclusions according to evidence (and logical norms). But apparently people don’t always do that.

Indeed, sometimes people don’t even have arguments! They just have the conclusions! #beliefBias

But when people reason this way, there might be no amount of counter evidence that can update their view. Their reasoning seems to be immune to facts. In other words, post fact reasoning does seem to be irredeemable. But I hope that I am wrong about that.

Notes

† (1) Answer: no. I’ve been registered as “No Party Affiliation” for at least 5 years — switching only when presidential primaries require a strategic change in affiliation. Before that, I was registered as a Republican. And so far, I’ve voted for a Republican, a Democratic, and a third-party presidential candidate. (2) If asking for evidence is a “leftist” thing to do, then that seems like a point for leftists, no?

Great piece Nick. I think the wilful ignorance is one sided however. I don’t know a liberal that doesn’t like to discuss climate change, disparity of educational opportunity, income inequality, monetization of healthcare, persistent poverty and racism after decades of money and programs and many other issues. To the extent they are discussed, it is within our own “safe” bubble. I have been struck by how uninformed we are in an age where facts and information are so available. We only look at data that confirms what we want to believe. The idea that everything you believe is based on… Read more »

Rick, So glad to hear from you! I hope you and yours are doing very well! Happy belated Veteran’s Day, by the way! I feel the asymmetry in the ignorance that you mention as well. But I often wonder if the data would actually support that. After all, the most educated people I know are (on average) more liberal. So of course I would perceive that liberals are more interested in the facts. The liberals that I know are more aware of some of the facts. But as you point out, my sample of friends might not be representative. It… Read more »

My focus when thinking about this topic of post-fact discussion and decision making is on instrumental effectiveness. By speaking in terms of ‘redeemability’, this throws the discussion into the moral arena which I see as ineffective. Is it useful to make a negative moral judgment of people who do not carefully consider evidence that conflicts with their opinions? Rather than wishing that things were different or condemning a massive portion of society, it seems more prudent to accept how it is and then focus on solutions. It seems to me that you are implicitly putting the burden of change on… Read more »

Hi Jesse! Great comments! And I love that you’re citing the relevant literature as you go. Thanks for engaging! Regarding the stuff about morality: rebuke heartily accepted. My use of ‘post-fact’ and ‘redeemable’ is mostly an attempt to be engaging in a public-facing blog post by using terms that are already in circulating in the public discourse. (And — to show my cards a bit — I am also a pragmatist. And, more specifically, I agree that condemnation is often unproductive (even when it is, strictly speaking, just)). Regarding your call to find common values/goals, sounds great! Where do I sign? But… Read more »

Thanks for your speedy reply, Nick! Oh, weird – the article from 2005 is the one I was referencing. Your desire to understand the mechanisms by which we motivate the search for common values is something I share. How to do this seems to be the million-dollar question (or perhaps, trillion-dollar question). I think the key to motivating the search for common values is to make a compelling argument for the idea that this search is the most effective way for each side to reach their own goals. Looking at the history of regulatory policy (from Jasanoff), the idea that… Read more »

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